The Judaism category has 469 audiobooks on Listento.it, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 1,810 ratings. The most-rated is By Chance Alone.
Memories of Glass
Summary
Reminiscent of Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife, this stunning novel draws from true accounts to shine a light on a period of Holland’s darkest history and bravest heroes. 1942. As war rips through the heart of Holland, childhood friends Josie van Rees and Eliese Linden partner with a few daring citizens to rescue Eliese’s son and hundreds of other Jewish children who await deportation in a converted theater in Amsterdam. But amid their resistance work, Josie and Eliese’s dangerous secrets could derail their friendship and their entire mission. When the enemy finds these women, only one will escape. Seventy-five years later, Ava Drake begins to suspect that her great-grandfather William Kingston was not the World War II hero he claimed to be. Her work as director of the prestigious Kingston Family Foundation leads her to Landon West’s Ugandan coffee plantation, and Ava and Landon soon discover a connection between their families. As Landon’s great-grandmother shares the broken pieces of her story, Ava must confront the greatest loss in her own life and powerful members of the Kingston family who will do anything to keep the truth buried. Illuminating the story and strength of these women, award-winning author Melanie Dobson transports listeners through time and place, from World War II, Holland, to contemporary Uganda, in this rich and inspiring novel.
©2019 Melanie Dobson (P)2019 Two Words Publishing LLC
The Year of Living Biblically
Summary
After his hilarious chronicle about reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z (actually a-ak to zyweic), our fearless author, A. J. Jacobs, tackles a new intellectual adventure, an exploration of the most influential book in the world: the Bible. He determined the best way to explore the Bible was to live it, as literally as possible. For one year. There are 700 rules in the Old and New Testaments, A. J. discovered - some wise, some general, some contradictory. Some from Jesus, some from prophets, some from God. A. J. assembled a board of spiritual advisors: rabbis, ministers, and priests, some conservative, some of them "one four-letter word away from excommunication", who would provide guidance and advice throughout his journey. But the journey was, by necessity, arbitrary. DIY religion. In The Year of Living Biblically, A. J. explores the Bible chronologically, from the Old Testament (crucial, given the 10 Commandments) to the New Testament (crucial, given America's powerful evangelical movement and its literal interpretation of the Bible) and lives the Bible on every level. He obeys the 10 Commandments, he is fruitful and multiplies (A. J.'s wife had twins during his year!); he remembers the Sabbath and keeps it holy. But he also obeys the oft-neglected rules, such as avoiding clothes of mixed fibers and refraining from shaving the edges of his beard (Leviticus 19:27). So, throughout the year, A. J. is commonly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. Or Moses. This is a look at religion today through one man's totally arbitrary, deeply funny, journey. In A. J.'s hands, The Year of Living Biblically is also fascinating and irresistible.
©2007 A. J. Jacobs (P)2007 Simon and Schuster Inc.
Auschwitz
Summary
Auschwitz was one of the first books to bring the full horror of the Nazi death camps to the American public; this is, as the New York Review of Books said, "the best brief account of the Auschwitz experience available." When the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944, they sent virtually the entire Jewish population to Auschwitz. A Jew and a medical doctor, the prisoner Dr. Miklos Nyiszli was spared death for a grimmer fate: to perform "scientific research" on his fellow inmates under the supervision of the man who became known as the infamous "Angel of Death" - Dr. Josef Mengele. Nyiszli was named Mengele's personal research pathologist. In that capacity he also served as physician to the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners who worked exclusively in the crematoriums and were routinely executed after four months. Miraculously, Nyiszli survived to give this horrifying and sobering account.
©1960, 2011 Miklos Nyiszli (P)2013 Audible, Inc.
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Summary
Anne Frank, it has been said, gave a face and a name to the horror of the Holocaust. This is her story. It relates how Anne, her family, and their friends hid in secret rooms - "the Annex" - in an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months. Anne, just 13 when the family moved in and only 15 when the Gestapo at last broke down the doors of her secret world, found hope where there was only fear and the first blush of love when outside and all around there washed a sea of hate. Wrote Ernst Schnable, a German writer who has researched Frank's life: "Out of the millions that were silenced, this voice no louder than a child's whisper has outlasted the shouts of the murderers and has soared above the voices of time."
©2015 BN Publishing (P)2015 BN Publishing
Yes to Life
Summary
Find hope even in these dark times with this rediscovered masterpiece, a companion to his international best seller Man's Search for Meaning. Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today - as the world faces a coronavirus pandemic, social isolation, and great economic uncertainty - as they did in 1946. He offers an insightful exploration of the maxim "Live as if you were living for the second time", and he unfolds his basic conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. Despite the unspeakable horrors of the camps, Frankl learned from the strength of his fellow inmates that it is always possible to "Say yes to life" - a profound and timeless lesson for us all.
©2020 Viktor E. Frankl (P)2020 Random House Audio
The Prodigal Prophet
Summary
An angry prophet. A feared and loathsome enemy. A devastating storm. And the surprising message of a merciful God to his people. The story of Jonah is one of the most well-known parables in the Bible. It is also the most misunderstood. Many people, even those who are nonreligious, are familiar with Jonah: A rebellious prophet who defies God and is swallowed by a whale. But there's much more to Jonah's story than most of us realize. In The Prodigal Prophet, pastor and New York Times best-selling author Timothy Keller reveals the hidden depths within the book of Jonah. Keller makes the case that Jonah was one of the worst prophets in the entire Bible. And yet there are unmistakably clear connections between Jonah, the prodigal son, and Jesus. Jesus in fact saw himself in Jonah. How could one of the most defiant and disobedient prophets in the Bible be compared to Jesus? Jonah's journey also doesn't end when he is freed from the belly of the fish. There is an entire second half to his story - but it is left unresolved within the text of the Bible. Why does the book of Jonah end on what is essentially a cliffhanger? In this audiobook, Timothy Keller provides an answer to the extraordinary conclusion of this biblical parable - and shares the powerful Christian message at the heart of Jonah's story.
©2018 Timothy Keller (P)2018 Penguin Audio
The Stone Crusher
Summary
In 1939, Gustav Kleinmann, a Jewish upholsterer in Vienna, was arrested by the Nazis. Along with his 16-year old son Fritz, he was sent to Buchenwald in Germany, where a new concentration camp was being built. It was the beginning of a five-year odyssey almost without parallel. They helped build Buchenwald, young Fritz learning construction skills which would help preserve him from extermination in the coming years. But it was his bond with his father that would ultimately keep them both alive. When the 50-year old Gustav was transferred to Auschwitz - a certain death sentence - Fritz was determined to go with him. His wiser friends tried to dissuade him - “If you want to keep living, you have to forget your father,” they said. But that was impossible, and Fritz pleaded for a place on the Auschwitz transport. “He is a true comrade,” Gustav wrote in his secret diary, “always at my side. The boy is my greatest joy. We are inseparable.” Gustav kept his diary hidden throughout his six years in the death camps - even Fritz knew nothing of it. In it he recorded his story, a tale of survival and a father-son bond which proved stronger than the machine that sought to break them both.
©2018 Jeremy Dronfield (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. This audiobook is published in arrangement with Chicago Review Press c/o Susan Schulman Literary Agency.
Five Chimneys
Summary
Olga Lengyel tells, frankly and without compromise, one of the most horrifying stories of all time. This true, documented chronicle is the intimate, day-to-day record of a beautiful woman who survived the nightmare of Auschwitz and Birchenau. This book is a necessary reminder of one of the ugliest chapters in the history of human civilization. It was a shocking experience. It is a shocking book.
©2018 Chicago Review Press (P)2018 Chicago Review Press
The Dead Sea Scrolls
Summary
Whether complete or only fragmentary, the 930 extant Dead Sea Scrolls irrevocably altered how we look at and understand the foundations of faith and religious practice. Now you can get a comprehensive introduction to this unique series of archaeological documents, and to scholars' evolving understanding of their authorship and significance, with these 24 lectures. Learn what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus. In following the extraordinary story of how the scrolls were acquired and ultimately published - a story fully 40 years in its unfolding - you'll also explore an almost unlimited treasure trove of new facts and insights. Throughout the lectures, you'll learn about these and other topics: the only historical instance of the Jews ever forcibly converting a conquered people to Judaism; the rare stroke of scholarly fortune represented in the discovery of the first seven scrolls sealed in jars; and the extraordinary intrigue (sometimes spanning generations) that overlays the story of the scrolls. At the heart of this series are the documents themselves. You'll spend a wealth of time reading parts of the actual scrolls in English translation, training your eye to uncover the salient religious practices and intriguing theological ideas expressed in these documents. By the conclusion of the final lecture, you'll have developed a newfound understanding and appreciation of an unprecedented historical find and its enduring influence on the way we think about - and talk about - ancient Judaism and Christianity. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2010 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2010 The Great Courses
Irena's Children
Summary
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping true account of Irena Sendler - the "female Oskar Schindler" - who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. In 1942 one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw Ghetto as a public health specialist. While she was there, she began to understand the fate that awaited the Jewish families who were unable to leave. Soon she reached out to the trapped families, going from door to door and asking them to trust her with their young children. She started smuggling children out of the walled district, convincing her friends and neighbors to hide them. Driven to extreme measures, and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city's sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings. But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: She kept a secret list buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend's back garden. On it were the names and true identities of these Jewish children, recorded so their families could find them after the war. She could not know that more than 90 percent of their families would perish. In Irena's Children, Tilar Mazzeo shares the incredible story of this courageous and brave woman who risked her life to save innocent children from the Holocaust - a truly heroic tale of survival, resilience, and redemption.
©2016 Tilar J. Mazzeo (P)2016 Simon & Schuster
Unit 731
Summary
"Unit 731: The Forgotten Asian Auschwitz, by Derek Pua, is not for the faint of heart. It is, however, for anyone wanting to more clearly understand the extent of Imperial Japanese war crimes. This brief, dispassionate, and factual book outlines the creation and development of Unit 731, an organization that employed thousands of Japanese scientists who conducted nightmarish experiments on an untold number of human guinea pigs, all in the name of medical research. "Even if one cannot stomach the details included in Unit 731: The Forgotten Asian Auschwitz, a basic knowledge of these atrocities should be more widely known, if only in the hope that history will never repeat itself in this horrific manner." (Kathryn Atwood, author, kathrynatwood.com) The Japanese invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese war has left a strong legacy of hate and disgust among many Chinese today. Much of the atrocities committed by the Japanese are now known to most historians. By far, the most despicable and forgotten act against humanity committed by the Imperial Japanese government was its covert biochemical weapons program. Euphemistically labelled as the "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department" of the Imperial Japanese Army, the Japanese conducted a wide range of cruel and inhumane experiments on prisoners who were often innocent. Under the leadership of Dr. Shiro Isshi, the department subjected three thousand to 250 thousand innocent men, women, and children to cruel experiments and medical procedures that were carried out by the brightest medical students and staff that Imperial Japan had to offer. In a bid to develop its own germ warfare capability, the government of Imperial Japan resorted to incredibly deprived and inhumane methods of experimentation, like infecting prisoners with virulent strains of anthrax, plague, cholera, and other diseases. These prisoners were often subject to excruciating vivisections without the use of anesthesia in order to observe the real-time effects of these deadly diseases. In this edition, we expanded on the background info of Unit 731 and expanded on the findings of the remains of Unit 731.
©2017 Pacific Atrocities Education (P)2018 Pacific Atrocities Education
I'll Be Damned
Summary
In this startling candid and poignant memoir, the legendary Emmy Award-winning star of The Young and the Restless, America's number-one soap opera, chronicles his amazing life, from his birth in World War II Germany to his arrival in America to his rise to humanitarian and daytime superstar for the past 35 years. For nearly four decades, fans have welcomed the star of television's number-one daytime show, The Young and the Restless, into their living rooms. While they've come to know and love the suave Victor Newman, few truly know the man behind the character, the supremely talented Eric Braeden. I'll Be Damned is his story - a startling and uplifting true tale of war, deprivation, determination, fame, and social commitment that spans from Nazi Germany to modern Hollywood. Braeden's journey from a hospital basement in Kiel to the soundstages of Los Angeles has taught him more about joy, heartbreak, fear, dignity, loss, love, loneliness, exhilaration, courage, persecution, and profound responsibility to the global community than he could have hoped to learn in several lifetimes. Growing up in the years after Germany's defeat, Braeden knew very little about the atrocities of his parents' generation until he arrived in America as a teenager - a discovery that horrified and transformed him. Trying to redress the wrongs of his homeland, he has dedicated his life to humanitarian work - even forming the German American Culture Society - working for decades to show the world that what we share as humans is far more important than what separates us from one another. Told with openness, candor, humor, heart, and occasional raw vulnerability, I'll Be Damned reveals a man committed to making the world a better, more loving place. I'll Be Damned will be a treasured keepsake for Y&R fans and is an inspiring testament to the goodness within us all.
©2017 Eric Braeden (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
Hunting Eichmann
Summary
Best-selling author Neal Bascomb has garnered critical acclaim for such riveting nonfiction as Higher and Red Mutiny. Based on extensive interviews and previously classified details, Hunting Eichmann is a compelling account of the relentless hunt for the nefarious Adolf Eichmann.
©2009 Neal Bascomb (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC
Those Who Forget
Summary
“[Makes] the very convincing case that, until and unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be.” (Susan Glasser, The New Yorker) “Deserves to be read and discussed widely.... This is Schwarz’s invaluable warning.” (Samantha Power, The Washington Post Book Review) Those Who Forget, published to international awards and acclaim, is journalist Géraldine Schwarz’s riveting account of her German and French grandparents’ lives during World War II, an in-depth history of Europe’s postwar reckoning with fascism, and an urgent appeal to remember as a defense against today’s rise of far-right nationalism. During World War II, Géraldine Schwarz’s German grandparents were neither heroes nor villains; they were merely Mitlaüfer - those who followed the current. Once the war ended, they wanted to bury the past under the wreckage of the Third Reich. Decades later, while delving through filing cabinets in the basement of their apartment building in Mannheim, Schwarz discovers that in 1938, her paternal grandfather, Karl, took advantage of Nazi policies to buy a business from a Jewish family for a low price. She finds letters from the only survivor of this family (all the others perished in Auschwitz), demanding reparations. But Karl Schwarz refused to acknowledge his responsibility. Géraldine starts to question the past: How guilty were her grandparents? What makes us complicit? On her mother’s side, she investigates the role of her French grandfather, a policeman in Vichy. Weaving together the threads of three generations of her family story with Europe’s process of postwar reckoning, Schwarz explores how millions were seduced by ideology and overcome by a fog of denial after the war and, in Germany at least, eventually managed to transform collective guilt into democratic responsibility. She asks: How can nations learn from history? And she observes that countries that avoid confronting the past are especially vulnerable to extremism. Searing and unforgettable, Those Who Forget is a riveting memoir, an illuminating history, and an urgent call for remembering.
©2020 Geraldine Schwarz (P)2020 Simon & Schuster Audio
Sun Stand Still
Summary
If you're not daring to believe God for the impossible, you may be sleeping through some of the best parts of your Christian Life. This book is not a Snuggie. The words on these pages will not go down like Ambien. I’m not writing to calm or coddle you. With God’s help, I intend to incite a riot in your mind. Trip your breakers and turn out the lights in your favorite hiding places of insecurity and fear. Then flip the switch back on so that God’s truth can illuminate the divine destiny that may have been lying dormant inside you for years. In short, I’m out to activate your audacious faith. To inspire you to ask God for the impossible. And in the process, to reconnect you with your God-sized purpose and potential.
©2010 Steven Furtick; 2010 Random House Audio
The Holocaust
Summary
On June 1944, Freda Wineman and her family arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous Nazi concentration and death camp. After a cursory look from an SS doctor, Freda's life was spared and her mother was sent to the gas chambers. Freda only survived because the Allies won the war - the Nazis ultimately wanted every Jew to die. Her mother was one of millions who lost their lives because of a racist regime that believed that some human beings simply did not deserve to live - not because of what they had done, but because of who they were. Laurence Rees has spent 25 years meeting the survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In this sweeping history, he combines this testimony with the latest academic research to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. Rees argues that while hatred of the Jews was at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, we cannot fully understand the Holocaust without considering Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well. He also reveals that there was no single overarching blueprint for the Holocaust. Instead, a series of escalations compounded into the horror. Though Hitler was most responsible for what happened, the blame is widespread, Rees reminds us, and the effects are enduring. The Holocaust: A New History is an accessible yet authoritative account of this terrible crime. A chronological, intensely listenable narrative, this is a compelling exposition of humanity's darkest moment.
©2017 Laurence Rees (P)2017 Hachette Audio
The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi
Summary
As a lifelong student of Scripture, Kathie Lee Gifford has always desired a deeper understanding of God's Word and a deeper knowledge of God Himself. But it wasn't until she began studying the biblical texts in their original Hebrew and Greek - along with actually hiking the ancient paths of Israel - that she found the fulfillment of those desires. Now you can walk with Kathie on a journey through the spiritual foundations of her faith: The Rock (Jesus Christ): Hear directly from Kathie about her life-changing and ever-deepening connection with Jesus, the Lover of her soul. The Road (Israel): Explore dozens of ancient landmarks and historical sites from Israel, the promised land of God's covenant. The Rabbi (God's Word): Go beyond a "Sunday school" approach to the Bible by digging into the original languages and deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures. As you journey through The Rock, The Road, and The Rabbi, you'll also find additional content from Messianic Rabbi Jason Sobel throughout the book. Jason's insight into the Hebrew language, culture, and heritage will open your eyes to the Bible like never before. Come! Begin your journey toward a deeper faith through The Rock, the Road, and the Rabbi.
©2018 Kathie Lee Gifford, Jason Sobel (P)2018 Thomas Nelson
No Room for Small Dreams
Summary
In 1934, 11-year-old Shimon Peres emigrated to the land of Israel from his native Poland, leaving behind an extended family who would later be murdered in the Holocaust. Few back then would have predicted that this young man would eventually become one of the towering figures of the 20th century. Peres would indeed go on to serve the new nation as prime minister, president, foreign minister, and the head of several other ministries. He was central to the establishment of the Israeli Defense Forces and the defense industry that would provide the young nation with a robust deterrent power. He was crucial to launching Israel's nuclear energy program and to the creation of its high-tech "Start Up Nation" revolution. His refusal to surrender to conventional wisdom and political conventions helped save the Israeli economy and prompted some of the most daring military operations in history, among them the legendary Operation Entebbe. And yet, as important as his role in creating and deploying Israel's armed forces was, his stunning transition from hawk to dove - with its accompanying unwavering commitment to peace - made him one of the globe's most recognized, honored, and admired statesmen. In this, his final work, finished only weeks before his passing, Peres offers a long-awaited examination of the crucial turning points in Israeli history through the prism of having been a decision maker and eyewitness. Told with the frankness of someone aware this would likely be his final statement, No Room for Small Dreams spans decades and events, but as much as it is about what happened, it is about why it happened. Examining pivotal moments in Israel's rise, Peres explores what makes for a great leader, how to make hard choices in a climate of uncertainty and distress, the challenges of balancing principles with policies, and the liberating nature of imagination and unpredicted innovation. In doing so, he not only charts a better path forward for his beloved country but provides deep and universal wisdom for younger generations who seek to lead - be it in politics, business, or the broader service of making our planet a safer, more peaceful, and just place.
©2017 Shimon Peres (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
Summary
In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system. Examining, close up, life and death inside the camps, and adopting a wider lens to show how the camp system was shaped by changing political, legal, social, economic, and military forces, Wachsmann produces a unified picture of the Nazi regime and its camps that we have never seen before. A boldly ambitious work of deep importance, KL is destined to be a classic in the history of the 20th century. Many books have explored the general history of the Holocaust and the Nazis, or anatomized individual concentration camps. But there has, surprisingly, never been a comprehensive history of the camps that integrates the stories of both the broad development of the system and daily life in the camps. In KL (the widely used acronym for konzentrationslager, German for concentration camps), Wachsmann offers an unprecedented account of the development of the camps, similar in scope and approach to Anne Applebaum's best-selling and award-winning Gulag: A History (2003). We will publish on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of most of the camps in April 1945. Wachsmann is the first to synthesize a new generation of original scholarship on the camps, much of it only available in German and little-known in the English-speaking world. And he has unearthed a wide range of new documents, offering startling new revelations about the history of the camps.
©2015 Original Material by Nikolaus Wachsmann (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books
Le secret du coffre bleu
Summary
"C’est incroyable de pouvoir lever le voile sur une partie secrète de la vie de ma mère. Je vous invite à me suivre dans cet univers surprenant." À la mort de sa mère adoptive, l’humoriste Lise Dion découvre, dans le coffre bleu qui a bercé son imaginaire d’enfant, des documents étonnants concernant la vie de cette femme qu’elle a tant aimée. Lise a alors voulu comprendre ce que sa mère avait vécu. Elle a pu, en s’appuyant sur des témoignages et sur des faits historiques concernant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, tisser l’histoire de sa mère en entre-mêlant la vérité découverte dans le coff re et une fiction très proche de la réalité. Armande se dévoile et laisse un héritage inestimable à sa fille unique, qui a choisi de le partager avec son public.
©2011 Éditions Libre expression (P)2020 Vues et Voix